Category: Holy

Delivered

From Our Enemies (Mostly Us)

Friday, March 31, 2023

Our Paths Are Never Without The Shadows of

…

our own evils.

Judges 3:9

But when the Israelites cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for the Israelites, who delivered them, Othniel son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother.

Luke 1:68

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favourably on his people and redeemed them.

Words of Grace For Today

God delivers us

mostly from ourselves

as the agents of evil that permeates all our lives

in surprising and oft denied ways so that we may too easily think all is coming up roses

when in reality the things we do stink more than the sewage pipe from the city dwellers before the first treatment plant.

Which is to say, collectively we make quite a stinking mess of the world.

Lately we see how the world comes back on us and all life, trying to stop us from destroying everything. Wild climate change storms and events that threaten all life on earth.

What are we thinking

other than only for ourselves, the future be damned.

Well it is. The future is quite damned by what we do and fail to do.

We need a saviour, not so simply as a warrior to defeat the enemy soldiers attacking us to rule over us and make us slaves.

No, this saviour needs to save us from ourselves. From our greed, avarice, and wilfulness that leaves us willing to destroy others (and ourselves and all our futures) just so that today (and a few of our tomorrows) may be ours to ‘enjoy’ in comfort.

Ahh! What was God thinking when God created us so capable of such destruction and evil …

if not

that God also created us capable of equally such great love, care, respect, and goodness.

Today, which will we choose to live out?

Listen

And Clearly Hear How Equal We All Are

Wednesday, March 29, 2023

We Are The Glorious Tops Among Creatures,

Favoured By God,

Just As All Other Peoples Are, Too!

So Not Really Specially Favoured,

Except We Certainly Do Not Deserve

Anything Good From God.

Psalms 117:1

Praise the Lord, all you nations! Extol him, all you peoples!

Acts of the Apostles 2:11

[On Pentecost people of many nations Cretans and Arabs gathered to hear the disciples said:]in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.

Words of Grace For Today

While jealous, and greedy, and wilful peoples of all generations have claimed that God loved them and hated their neighbours (today we call it xenophobia which results is so many disastrous deeds done to others even xenocide) God has a different message, over and over delivered in many and various ways. God loves, works through, and claims all kinds of people,

especially sinners.

So, while many would like to say they just do not understand God calling them to embrace their neighbours and enemies with love, but rather that God favours them and them alone among the many peoples, God speaks clearly so that every person can hear the Good News proclaimed in their own language.

Of course that often takes lots of work on the part of translators and other dedicated people who wish to share the Good News with all peoples.

Today will we be those who exclude others, with all sorts of twists of logic that somehow we are better and better enough compared to others to have received God’s favour when others have not?

Or

Will we be the ones to welcome with open arms all kinds of people, especially the sinners, whom we have to acknowledge we are definitely counted among.

Welcome

Brilliant Light?

Monday, March 27, 2023

Brilliant Light Is Only Welcomed

By Those Who Have Nothing

To Hide.

Psalms 48:11

Let Mount Zion be glad, let the towns of Judah rejoice because of your judgments.

Matthew 10:7

As you go, proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.”

Words of Grace For Today

God’s judgments are good news for those whom God does not condemn. Since God turns right-side-up the world’s upside-down way of living to gain for one’s self at others’ expense, those who have ‘succeeded’ and found a life of privilege, power, and comfort for themselves will be condemned. They will lose all their privilege, power, and comfort – indeed all their life – for eternity when God judges them. Those who the ‘succeeders’ have put down, cast out, and sucked the life out of, those people will gain a place in God’s Kingdom for eternity. They will live forever as God’s own children.

If Zion and the towns of Judah are to rejoice because of God’s judgments, then it must be that they have suffered while others have sucked life out of them.

God’s judgments are good news. But they are not good news for everyone!

Proclaiming that the Kingdom of God is near, may indeed be good news, but those who do not recognize their own terrible sins will be caught, and for them it’s not good news.

The thing that is terrible is that many people who suck life out of others know full well what God’s judgment against them will be. They also know full well that anyone proclaiming that the Kingdom of God is come near is not proclaiming any good news for them.

Watch out proclaimers of ‘good news’ for the privileged, powerful, and comfortable will do everything possible to stop the proclamation. Taking life is a regular venture for them.

Who could have guessed that proclaiming good news to all people would put one’s life at such risk?

Anyone who reads the Gospel,

and gives God thanks for the saints who have gone before us.

Today: more proclaiming the good news is our task, ready of not!

Holy

Rock

Sunday, March 19, 2023

Rocky Shores,

Rocky Lives,

Rock of Salvation

First Samuel 2:2

There is no Holy One like the Lord, no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God.

1 Peter 1:15

Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct;

Words of Grace For Today

It was just a four day outing into the Boundary Water Canoe Area. The first day the sun shone bright and warm, the winds were light and mostly at their backs. Camp that first night was everything they’d dreamed of for their honeymoon. What neither could know was that it would all dramatically change soon enough.

Brent and Nellie had this planned since they were seniors in High School. During University they’d continued to date, except for those few months when they’d fought and broken up and tried to imagine life without each other.

It was the last thing each had wanted, but in their chemistry class the professor had assigned them to work together on a lab and demonstration to teach the complex events of nuclear fission compared to nuclear fusion. It had nearly cost them their sanity as they tried to work on the project without being anywhere near each other. It was that fusion part that had, ironically, brought them together to film their presentation to a class of High School students and their parents.

After they got over their awkwardness and moved into the presentation everything started to flow, like it had for them before. Then the slide presentation simply quit. The computer died. So without missing a beat they started to really click and work together, one talking while the other drew on the presentation paper they had for ready to record questions on, then switching roles as each led with their strengths. That paper and their voices were their only presentation medium. Like a dance couple they had pulled it off with grace, and in fact their impromptu final demonstration of fusion, a completely unplanned kiss, drew applause … and their chem prof used the video of their presentation as a demonstration for their class and for years afterwards of what an A+ presentation looked like!

That kiss rocked their worlds, providing balm for so many hurts.

Within days they both knew from their own experience so much more about God, their Rock and Salvation, than ever before … most of it was about mercy and forgiveness.

That’s God’s holiness in motion, even for us today.

So what will we do with it, again this day?

My Life

For a Light!

Tuesday, March 14, 2023

Just a little light can make a big difference.

And God’s Light

Makes ALL the Difference

in the World.

Isaiah 66:18E

For I know their works and their thoughts, and I am coming to gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and shall see my glory,

2 Corinthians 4:6

For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

There are three ways (maybe among many others) that we take to deal with darkness in and around us:

1) we shine a light into it to change it.

2) we wallow in the darkness as if it were all we have or could have.

3) we deny the darkness and bruise our shines over and over again until we die, having bled out from our open shine wounds we cannot see in the darkness and refuse to acknowledge, for fear we will have to admit we are in the darkness, or worse: that we are the darkness.

What do we do, though, when we do not have a light, and we know the darkness too well to either deny it or be willing to wallow in it?

We trust that God will bring the light that we cannot find, shine it in the darkness and in our darkness, and as painful and disgusting as it may be to see what up until then festered in the dark, God also brings forgiveness, renewal, and a mission for us: to share the light with everyone caught in darkness.

Light work for this day as well, ready or not.

Be

To Me, That I May Be

Friday, March 3, 2023

God Gives Us Wide Horizons,

And Paths To Follow the Saints,

to the Light

Psalms 31:9

Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye wastes away from grief, my soul and body also.

Ephesians 1:18

so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints,

Words of Grace For Today

The greatest distress that any human can face (since it covers for so many lesser distresses as well) is to not be,

to not be seen,

to not be heard,

to not be known,

to not be remembered,

to not be loved,

to not be anything at all.

…

God promises to protect us from the evil that would make this be for us.

God sees us.

God hears us.

God knows us.

God remembers us.

God loves us.

And God makes sure we are something to God, and

that many other people

see, hear, know, remember, and love us.

And God sends us out to see, hear, know, remember, and love all people,

so not one person need cry

Lord, see me, hear me, know me, remember me, love me.

Makes for a full day every day, and a full life lived,

when we work so that all people are seen, heard, known, remembered, and …

most of all …

loved.

God’s Word

Forever Yes

Friday 24 February 2023

Over Us All,

And All Our Endeavours,

God Brings

Light

and God’s Life Affirming Word

Isaiah 55:3

Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.

2 Corinthians 1:20

For in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes. ’ For this reason it is through him that we say the ‘Amen’, to the glory of God.

Words of Grace For Today

We all know too well the ‘no’s that the world throws at us and so many others. We are well practised at tossing our ‘no’s into the mix … where they do not belong (for they rebound back on us more than they impact others).

God has always had a contrary way (contrary not to the universe, but to our perverted way of being in it) of working with creation and us creatures.

God says Yes! Yes! YES! And forever YES!!

To all of life’s goodness and to us in it (though we are full of so much that is not good) God says YES! And forever God says YES!

While we waste away life filling it with ‘no’s, God calls us to be those who also proclaim God’s YES! to all people.

And that starts by confessing our sins, accepting forgiveness and renewed life, and accepting that we are God-sent to say AMEN! to all God’s YES!’s.

Just another little challenge for this day, too, again, and again, …. forever.

Amen. (may it be so.)

Boots

(Or Shoes)

Friday 10 February 2023

Paths Tromped Repeatedly

by Boots

Isaiah 52:7

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’

Ephesians 6:15

As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.

Words of Grace For Today

My feet ache. My right foot especially aches and gives me pause before I slip on my boots to walk outside in the snow. I bought a new pair of boots, knowing that they would need a felt insole to be warm enough. Before I was able to get an insole, I wore them as they came, and discovered that something, something almost imperceptible is wrong in the moulding of the foot area and in the insert in the right boot. There’s a bump or something, a wrinkle in the insulating insert. And it’s wreaking havoc with my foot, just a little bit at a time. Even with an additional form-fit insole in on top the felt insole it’s gotten to the point where I go outside with plastic sandals if I can, instead of subjecting my feet to the slowly accumulating injuries that these boots are causing. Of course when I put the boot on it feels okay. When I ordered the boots on sale, for that was already a stretch, I ordered my size. The arrived and were too small by far, so I returned them and ordered the next larger size. When they came the right insert was wrinkled oddly. I tried to straighten it out and put them on. I needed them desperately for the cold of winter came early and quickly. So months later my feet ache.

Now if I had lots of money to spare or even some, I’d go out and buy a pair of boots at a more regular price, nearly three times what I paid for these. But that’s not an option. So trudge on I do, but it’s difficult to bring a word of peace while wearing these boots, or any of the other boots that I have that have holes, tears or simply no insulation left in them.

Putting on a good pair of boots would be a luxury at this time, for me and millions of others around the world.

Yet God sends us out, with our best shoes or boots, to bring God’s word of peace to all people. Our feat may be celebrated, and our feet may look beautiful to our listeners to take God’s Word to heart. That doesn’t mean that our feet (or any other part of us) will survive unblemished, injured, or healthy.

That’s just they way the world wears on us, and only God’s Word of peace can make the wearing of the world not cause us injury and pain.

Another day, giving it our best, wearing our best, prepared for the worst. Out of the worst God always brings deliverance. On we go, which is our testimony to how beautiful God’s creation is.

Found

In The Silence

Thursday 9 February 2023

God Sees Us,

No Matter Fog, Snow, or the Darkness

of Our Hearts

–

and God still walks with us.

Zephaniah 1:7

Be silent before the Lord God! For the day of the Lord is at hand; the Lord has prepared a sacrifice, he has consecrated his guests.

Matthew 24:44

Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

Words of Grace For Today

When we are still, quiet, calm, and silent what do we hear?

The traffic pounding the pavement, going back and forth, who knows why so many of us have so many places to go, just because we can or others will pay us if we do or we have learned that we must in order to eat (the things we want to eat)?

The bells ringing across the countryside inviting people to worship, or tolling to mark the funeral of yet another person no longer breathing, or clanging in alarm as the war reaches the outskirts of this area?

The manufacturing cascade of sounds of machinery churning, pumping, grinding, and wearing themselves out before their time?

The wild music of alcohol and drug induced partying that can erupt into all kinds of behaviour and violence spilling over into others’ safety?

The squirrels sounding alarm, crows cawing, an owl hooting, and the lynx silently invisibly avoiding the stinky skunks?

The ravages of a brain fully engaged in multiple tracks of problem solving stuck spinning against the slings and arrows of time?

Sometimes, not wanting to be silent is a reasonable protection from the cost of our times of industry chugging along to sustain an unsustainable life-style, nature fighting us into extinction with climate change, viruses, and fungi, and our inevitable defences of rampant escapism.

But

every once in a while for most of us (and always for some ‘blessed’ mystics), when we are silent, we not only hear that silent lynx, but we see that God walks with us crunching footsteps into the snow-pack.

God’s day is here, with us, always has been. Best is to get used to it.

For whatever we are up to, God is up to it with us, celebrating our thinkings, sayings and doings, or suffering the same.

Smile you are on ‘candid camera’, God’s view of us each and all, as it has been since before we were born, and even before time was created

when God consecrated us to ….

Word-Wise

Tuesday 7 February 2023

Like the Beauty All Around Us,

God’s Word Permeates Everything.

Trust It.

Isaiah 55:10-11

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

John 15:7-8

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

Words of Grace For Today

Lots of ‘hot air’ blowing around these days, climate change not the cause. It is the age old thing about humans that deceit always seems a nice short cut to achieving what is desired.

So much ‘hot air’ (lies, deceit, fake news, perjury, corruption from the lowest to the most ‘trusted’ levels of everything – even courts, bishops, and … well everywhere!) floats around one has a real case to say that the case of global warming is due mostly to ‘hot air’.

In fact all the climate change deniers producing fake science, fake news, and fake intelligence kept the obvious from happening sooner, ie the reduction of everything that causes climate change.

But boys will be boys, girls will be girls … OK it’s really lying boys will be lying boys even when the get old. Mean girls will be mean girls even when they get old, and the Devil’s temptations to ‘short cuts’ that destroy the doer and many others keep catching more and more people meaning the increase in ‘hot air’ outstrips any incident of inflation ever.

Our words are very effective, at destruction of life, and at healing life.

No question which God intends for us to use with our words.

Thank God everything is not determined by our words, or there would be no hope for any of us.

God’s Word determines everything, even that we are capable of such ‘hot air’ destruction. God’s Word is simple: life is intended and best lived by accepting our sinfulness, confessing them always, repenting (turning back towards God’s will for us), and accepting God’s sending us out to be imitators of Jesus the Christ: sacrificially giving of ourselves (exercising compassion, forgiveness, and unconditional love) so that others may live as God intended us to live.

In a Word: God’s Word for us is that we love God, ourselves, and our neighbours, even our enemies.

Today, as each day, that’s more than enough to keep us busy, focused, and working on making the world a bit better around us for us all.